Stathis,
thanks for a reply in reason - you said the million
dollar word. (I will come back to 'quote' it).
First:
As Norman, I, too, was a very smart kid (and am still
very modest - ha ha) and had ALL my experiences of a
5-year old at 5. Since then I collected 2-3 additional
'experienced' features into my 'mind'. Still unsure if
they 'match' some outside "real reality" or just being
manufactured by my incredible(!) fantasy. 'Unsure' is
the word.
Now in your wise position (worth remembering) you
wrote
> The best we can do in science as
> in everyday life is to accept provisionally that
> things are as they seem. <
I agree and thank you for it.
The BIG word is PROVISIONALLY. Then others pick it up,
not only in reply-button list-posts, but in books, in
teaching - over 2500 years and already after some
hundred quotations people grow into believeing it - no
provisioanlly, - as the TRUTH. It became science and
even coomon knowledge.Taught at colleges for
centuries.
When did you last learn that the tenets of ongoing
physics are only "provisionally" accepted as 'real'?
(I just wanted to tease members of this list.
Of course on THIS list 'thinking' people gathered and
such thoughts are not unusual. We are the exception.)
An example is the Big Bang. Many scientists almost put
it into their evening prayer. Doubting is heresy.
This is why I scrutinize what we 'believe in' and try
alternate narratives: do they hold water? Are the new
(alternate) ideas palatable to what (we think) we
experience?
We shoul not forget that we are products of a long
long 'evolutioary' line of development and responses
arose to phenomena otherwise unexplained like the
hardness of a figment we call 'tble' or the 'pain'
when kicked, all fotted into the most ingenious
edifice of "existence" - whatever THAT may be.
Bruno and the numberologists wisely reduce the problem
into 'numbers - math': - that is all. We really cannot
encompass the known and unknown varieties of
everything but I try to face our ignorance-based awe
and 'hope' to open (small) windows into more than we
had earlier.
The 'number-line' is a good variant, I find it still
insufficient. I don't want to 'numerify' my pleasure
to listen to musical 'art', laugh at a good joke, or
enjoying a Black Forest Cake. Would make me sorry if
it turns out to be true. As George said: I am crazy,
too.
John Mikes
--- Stathis Papaioannou
<stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> Norman Samish writes:
>
> > In a discussion about philosophy, Nick Prince
> said, "If we are living in a simulation. . ."
> > To which John Mikes replied, "I think this is the
> usual pretension. . . I think 'we simulate what we
> are living in' according to the little we know.
> Such 'simulation' - 'simplification' - 'modeling' -
> 'metaphorizing' - or even 'Harry Potterizing' things
> we think does not change the 'unknown/unknowable' we
> live in. We just think and therefore we think we
> are."
> > This interchange reminded me of thoughts I had as
> a child - I used to wonder if if everything I
> experienced was real or a dream. How could I know
> which it was? I asked my parents and was
> discouraged, in no uncertain terms, from asking them
> nonsensical questions. I asked my playmates and
> friends, but they didn't know the answer any more
> than I did. I had no other resources so I concluded
> that the question was unanswerable and that the best
> I could do was proceed as if what I experienced was
> reality.
> > Now, many years later, I have this list - and
> Wikipedia - as resources. But, as John Mikes (and
> others) say, I still cannot know that what I
> experience is reality. I can only assume that
> reality is how things appear to me - and I might be
> wrong.
>
> I think the young Norman Samish got it right:
>
> (a) I used to wonder if if everything I experienced
> was real or a dream. How could I know which it was?
>
> (b) I had no other resources so I concluded that the
> question was unanswerable and that the best I could
> do was proceed as if what I experienced was reality.
>
> To "know the truth" is to become godlike, standing
> outside of the world and seeing everything for what
> it really is... and even then you might ask yourself
> whether you really are omniscient or only *think*
> you are omniscient. The best we can do in science as
> in everyday life is to accept provisionally that
> things are as they seem. There is no shame in this,
> as long as you are ready to revise your theory in
> the light of new evidence, and it is certainly
> better than assuming that things are *not* as they
> seem, in the absence of any evidence.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
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Received on Sun Aug 13 2006 - 08:06:13 PDT